World Famous Comics: The Exorcist (The Version You've Never Seen)
The Exorcist (The Version You've Never Seen)
Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Linda Blair, Lee J. Cobb, Kitty Winn Directed By: William Friedkin Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: DVD Format: AC-3, Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC Number of Items: 1 Region Code: 1 Release Date: December 26, 2000 Running Time: 122 minutes Studio: Warner Home Video Theatrical Release Date: December 26, 1973
Product Description: The account of a young girl who is possessed, and the Exorcist who tries to save her. Genre: Horror Rating: UN Release Date: 3-FEB-2004 Media Type: DVD
Amazon.com essential video: Director William Friedkin was a hot ticket in Hollywood after the success of The French Connection, and he turned heads (in more ways than one) when he decided to make The Exorcist as his follow-up film. Adapted by William Peter Blatty from his controversial bestseller, this shocking 1973 thriller set an intense and often-copied milestone for screen terror with its unflinching depiction of a young girl (Linda Blair) who is possessed by an evil spirit. Jason Miller and Max von Sydow are perfectly cast as the priests who risk their sanity and their lives to administer the rites of demonic exorcism, and Ellen Burstyn plays Blair's mother, who can only stand by in horror as her daughter's body is wracked by satanic disfiguration. One of the most frightening films ever made with a soundtrack that's guaranteed to curl your blood, The Exorcist was mysteriously plagued by troubles during production, and the years have not diminished its capacity to disturb even the most stoical viewers. Don't say you weren't warned! --Jeff Shannon
Classic ^ It is truely rare for a film to transend its plot, its genre. I am sure besides The Exorcist, there are examples, but I have thought hard and none come to mind
What does come to mind is that when see this film at the video store in the horror section, I just have to laugh. Horror is great, but calling Billy Friedkin's Exorcist is like calling the Beatles a rock and roll group or Picasso a painter.
And even that does not hold water. The Beatles and Picasso worked in their genres to define them. Exorsist takes elements of horror, but goes completely outside the box of horror fights or horror cheese.
A preist digs up an idol on a archeology site in Iraq. He knows he has found something evil, forces he cannot put back. Soon, in Georgetown Washington, a sweet little girl, daughter of a film star, develops what seems to be a psychatric illness. She morphs, slowly, into a sexualized monster.
This is what we think at first, and so does her mother. But she is not the monster. The monster is the devil himself. The mother does not know this, and after extensive psychological and medical treatment, goes to see a priest. The mother knows something even more awful--far more awful-than disease has taken her daugter. She is proven right when the beast comes out of the little girl and kills two priests during the exorsism, one having a crisis of faith, the other the priest who excavated the idol in Iraq.
This was 1973, which is part of the reason the Exorcist works so amazingly on so many levels. Horror was becomming more serious, graphic, and better made in the 1970s.
Friendkin, though, removes the always implied fiction of the genre . We are so sucked into the idea this child has a grave mental illness, it becomes plausable that she is in fact had by Satan himself.
Even the most secularized viewer of the Exorsist will feel the fear of this prospect. Dark nights, cold rooms, the mother being totally alone in the house: all the conventions that make standard horror creepy, and define it in our minds as fiction, are given concrete and awful reality. If it can happen to a film star in a major US city in 1973, it can happen to any of us. The devil is real.
Evil exsists, The Exorsist tells us, and can strike randomly at any time. We belive it.
1973 was David Bowie, key clubs, Watergate: even the most straight suburbinte was getting more secularized. The counter-culture was seeping to the mainstreem. God, the intellectuals thought, was dead. There was no evil or good, just relative behavior.
Friedkin is sticking it to us here in the most primal of ways: no good, no evil, like your textbooks, your encounter groups, your psychoanalysis?
HAVE THIS.
IT'S A CLASSIC ^ this is a movie that sent chills down my spine when i was growing up. i had to have it for my collection and now that my daughter is grown it is one of her favorits also.
The Exorcist ^ When a 12-year old girl is possessed by demons, a young priest takes it upon himself to selflessly save her at the behest of her famous movie-star mother. In an era when many movies compete to scare the devil out of you, The Exorcist remains one of the few able to successfully scare the devil into you. This is one of the great horror movies.
didn't sleep for a week ^ they dont make horror films like this anymore, not for the children, but a must have for any horror collection
The most terrifying movie ever created ... ^ I remember watching scenes from this movie when i was around 9 years old and closing my eyes really tight and plugging my ears. My brother which was maybe 18 at the time knew how afraid i was of this movie and one time recorded her voice onto a tape recorder and placed it under my bed. When i went to bed he played it and i got out of bed crying, he got into so much trouble for that. I'm now 34 and this is the only film ever created which is truly terrifying to me. I cannot hear her voice or see her face, because it's an image or sound i cannot easily erase from my mind. We're adults now and it's a bit funny thinking back on it, but this film is one of my brothers favorites ... he has a magazine clipping of the Exorcists picture and not too long ago showed it to me when i wasn't expecting it and i ran out of the house screaming, (neighbors must have thought i was crazy). He still gets a kick out of it, although it was a good laugh for everyone. I tried watching it all the way through several years ago, but still covered my eyes and my ears ... anything having to do with demonic possession is just scary. This is one that is not easily forgotten.
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